The nightmare rental situation I had going on in one of the apartments I rent out is over. It has been several years of constant drama and I am so happy it is over. Unfortunately, they left in the middle of the night it looks like. There was even food on the stove and in the microwave, which is so freakin' weird. I can't believe they didn't clean up anything.

Luckily, my mother helped me clean it last night (garbage day) and now it is under control. I took her out to icecream afterwards. Like the reverse of when I was a kid.

Who leaves an apartment like this. Especially considering I gave the a break on the rent for like 3 months.






This is the view from backyward the showhouse tour we went to on Sunday. I thought it was cool to see those buildings from another angle.


I can't believe they shelaced newspaper on the floor as a decorative style. That is so tacky.

Here are some pics from the camera.

I got a dremel and a bunch of other home repair electronics this weekend. It seems pretty fantastic for stripping paint away from those hard to get to places on the fireplace.




Ate at empire with (e:lilho) and (e:terry) They have the best Lime calamari with rock shrimp appetizer.


Here it is up close.


Afterwards we got a picture of our reflection in their Hertel side window.


I love Ming Tea Cafe. I ate there again - you really need to check it out if you have not been there. They do not have bubble tea though (e:james,39169)





On saturday, we toured the Lockport Caves. At first I thought it was going to be dumb but the tour was pretty neat and there is even a cave boat ride.




It was almost impossible to get pictures down there. These were taken at ISO 1600 but we were moving on the boat and it would really require stillness.


I am scarping the porch to repaint it dark brown.

Last night at like 3am I was standing with (e:lilho) and (e:tina) in front of underground on Delaware waiting for jeremy to pick up (e:tina) when (e:lilho) had a breakdown that no one would ever love her, etc.

During the episode, some thugs in a car pull up and start threatening to "kill all the faggots."

(e:lilho) is oblivious to the whole thing. I have to admit I was scared after our car was knifed on that corner two years ago while we were in it. This time thoug, some big gay dudes step in a walk up the car saying, "Go ahead and call me a faggot to my face" and the thugs got scared and left. You can hear that somewhere in the clip.

So there are no pictures but (e:lilho) says at least enough words to be worth one.

::DOWNLOAD SOUND::

I wish I had my camera to record both incidences.

I just don't get the cushion structure on this couch at New York Pizza On Allen. It is clearly uphostered with macthing fabric but the cushions don't match up? Seems like a lot of re-uphostery work for something that doesn't fit properly.

An anonymous guest wrote:

I find you a little hypocritical. First off, those fire pit things you get at Home Depot can be considered illegal in the city. Not to mention the burning things isn't the greatest thing for the environment, remember? Secondly, your talk of living in a mansion is wonderful, i guess i would like to hear about some serious energy saving improvements, windows? insulation?

Dear anonymous person,
I suppose you are talking about the fact I criticized the Central Terminal for being heated by a coal plant all its own and for having a solid stone structure over a hundred feet high which is hard to heat.

We keep our house really cold in the winter to save energy. I wear a hat and scarf in the house and we keep all the lights off in the places we are not. We plastic the windows in the winter, use heavy drapes, recycle and have a compost pile for all the food scraps that the squirrels and tortoise don't eat.

We also bought vent-free gas stoves to heat localized area in the house that are 98% efficient and cost only about $1/day to run on high because of the way they use the gas so efficiently. In fact, our heating bill was only higher than $300 for the coldest month and that is for about 3500 sq. ft. of living space.

But really I don't care what you believe. I think you are just jealous but we can't all live in mansions.

Fuck you.
--paul

Here is the offensive chiminea being assembled by (e:matthew) and (e:terry) as they plot to destroy the earth.





Where is (e:matthew)


In my crazy earth destroying rage, I threw out all the Teflon pans in our house. In this case my environmental concerns were overpowered by my unwillingness to battle cancer.



Luckily, I replaced them with long term copper-bottomed, steel pans. I figured that way I should never need to replace the pans again, like you have to with the Teflon ones as they "decay." Normally they cost $360 pans but my bargain hunting mother found the on sale for $154. Here they are being washed in our environmentally sound dish washer. Paid $700 for an energy efficient one, instead of the cheaper high energy/water use ones. It is supposed to adjust the amount of water based on the weight of the dishes.



(e:matthew) found this root with a boner in the yard


This robin likes our worms


Got rid of all the remaining trash from the previous owner. Finally, we are done. None of the remaining crap was even worth bringing to amvets, most of it was molded due to a leak in the garage roof.


When we brought the garbage to the garbage transfer station on South Ogden I noticed someone lives right next door. Holy crap. It smells so bad there. The only way I can describe it is liek a mix of bologna and oregano with diarrhea. The previous time we were there it was a Saturday, I would not suggest ever going to the dump on a garbage day - although it was so busy they didn't weigh us or even check if we were citizens.








Here is (e:lilho) saying she wants to move to the rianforest, lol.

::Download Flash Video::

And then the food

Globe market on Elmwood - ate the turkey sage and cranberry mayo sandwich


I also bought the strawberry, whip crea puff


Then I ate at Ming Tea Cafe on Main Street again. This was (e:enknot)'s chicken with eggplant. This place really renews my faith in the tastiness of chinese food. Lunch is only $8.


Found this picture of chinese girls on the wall there that reminds me of the painting in (e:twisted)'s bedroom.



I'll leave you with basra eating.

::Download Flash Video::

The Queen City Roller Girls game at Rainbow Rink was packed. We went to go see (e:rachel) and (e:dragonlady) play. We seriously had to park like a block away and walk down some railroad tracks (as with any good trip to the tonawandas) to get to the place we were going. North Tonawanda smelled exactly how I remembered it - a faint smell of burning rubber.













Rainbow rink - 101 Oliver Street, North Tonawanda, NY was exactly how I remembered it. It was downright freakish to hear Mr. Roboto playing when we got there. I think it may have been the last song I heard there the last time I left, sometime in the 80s. It was nice to be able to drink beer this time around.




(e:terry) glowing in the blacklight




Gave a buck for fleshette. I would have given more but I had forgotten my wallet and that was my remaining change.




Even though she played for the "other team" - I think my favorite was crashinova - she reminded me of (e:robin) for some reason.

(e:lilho) was really stressed that the teams didn't have proper fashion consultation.

Sidenote: I wish I had a powerful mac capable of runnning Safari and IE along side both version of firefox. It is really a necessity in the business I am in. Right now I am really angry because something has changed and firefox is not uploading images for me on my linux install? I have no idea what the deal is seeing as I did not change the site code this week and that I can upload the images from Safari. I am seriously considering a new computer career that involves less complicated testing on diverse systems.

Well here they are - this weekend we went shopping for the garden and did lots of house work. Then we went to the Queen City Roller Girls Game. I also piled lost of garbage up for the dump, my first stop tomorrow morning before work, fun!

It was so foggy downtown on our way to the Rudolph and Son's nursery way down on Clinton Street.





Just before it is this giant white house. Does anyone know what it is?


They had lots of pretty blue and purple flowers. I tried taking pics of the same flowers with and without flash.








They removed more of the paint on the old club heat on Delaware. What is it going to become?


Ate another pitts burger from Jimmy Macs.

There is nothing as good as ramen noodles and lobster. I think it the culinary equivalent of drinking kristal in a trailer.

It is kind of sad that this is my last visit to compusa in Buffalo. Things are at 50% off which seems like a great deal but its still not competitive with internet prices in most cases.

::DOWNLOAD SOUND::

I was so excited with the prospect of buying stuff cheaply and reslling it on ebay, but wap.ebay.com went down as I began looking up prices.

We are currently undergoing server maintenance. Please try again in a few minutes.

Never has ebay gone down on my, why now while I am in the midde of shopping.

10 minutes later: I have decided to just give up and go home. It think there was potential but I am not in the mood anymore.

Byebye compusa - we had good times.

So I am just finishing a 60 hour work week in which I completed lots of really cool stuff. Unfortunately, I am not paid hourly anymore.

I really just want to go dancing but all my friends fell asleep already. I contemplated just going back to work as I know (e:enknot) is still there and I guess programming beats surfing for electronic gadgets I don't need to buy.

The other option is to work on estrip, or maybe even just watch television. I wonder what it would be like if I lived in a city whose nightlife was compatible with what I want to do. For sure, it is not go drink beer and hang out at the pink.

Artvoice Awards
I am in a pre-artvoice award depressed funk. I hate going to the Best Of Buffalo awards thing every year. I mean the food is great , it was great because it led to Artvoice hosting us and it is really fun, but it sucks to always lose. Part of me doesn't even want to go. (e:mike) told me that Susan Lucci lost 19 times before winning so there still is hope.

Tuber Madness
What is this tuberous monstrosity. They old had one giant one with that slit in it at the store. It weighed like 10 lbs.






(e:terry) got a haircut


I ate octopus at Kosta's again. I really like it.